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One of the more trivial details of the game is that the three platformers consistently mix up Blinky and Clyde, with the orange ghost becoming Blinky and the red one becoming Clyde (a mistake that World Rally fixed). To avoid any further confusion, they will be referred to by the incorrect names given in these games, rather than the proper ones that the rest of the franchise uses.

Blackout Basement: Crisis Cavern has a few sections in which the lighting dims considerably.

Boss Remix: King Galaxian's boss theme is actually a more intense version of the Galaga title theme.

Camera Screw: The camera is suited just fine for a 2½D side-scroller, but given that a lot of level segments require Pac-Man to move not only left and right, but forth and back as well, it can make many jumps much harder to accurately judge. Most notably, are some of those wheels in Spin Dizzy far away, or just really small?

Canon Immigrant: Professor Pac-Man (from an unauthorized game from Bally Midway) finally makes his appearance in an official Pac-Man game. Sourpuss (from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon) makes his cameo in this game, too.

Clown Prix. In almost every other PlayStation game with car controls, X is accelerate. In Pac-Man World it's the brake.

But the worst offender is the pause menu. For whatever reason, when you close the menu with the X button (as opposed to the Start button) it sends the command both to the menu (to close it) and to the freshly-unpaused game engine. The result is that Pac-Man will jump. And given the abundance of the Bottomless Pits, that would not be a good thing.

Disproportionate Retribution: All of the things that happened in the story, which include Pac's house getting destroyed, his family getting kidnapped, many various foes trying to kill Pac-Man, and an Evil Knockoff attempting to pass himself off as the real Pac-Man, can all be tied to Orson, the ghost that created and operated Toc-Man and the ultimate mastermind behind the plot only because the ghosts are despised by Pac-People and other living creatures, and that Orson himself has never had a friend before. Pac responds appropriately by taking out a Power Pellet and eating him.

Heroic Mime: Pac-Man, though at the beginning he yells when he sees that his friends and family have been kidnapped.

Hilarious Outtakes: If you beat the game at least once, you'll unlock a set of outtakes that are pretty funny.

Hitbox Dissonance: By the dev team's own admission; apparently they ran out of time when they were beta testing. It gets especially bad in Anubis Rex.

It's All About Me: Toc-Man, if the final cutscene prior to facing him is any indication.

Toc-Man: Look, here I am! Love me!

Lock and Key Puzzle: Much of the game is finding the right fruit to unlock doors to progress or find secrets.

Meaningless Lives: This game may be Nintendo Hard in many respects, but let it never be denied that it is ridiculously easy to amass a life count in the hundreds. Getting three Galaxians at the end-level slot machine nets you three extra lives, and on average you can play the slot machine five to ten times per level. Memorizing the order of the slots is easy, because all three use the same pattern; in fact, if you regularly play in earshot of others, they might start to be convinced that "apple-cherry-peach-cherry-STOP!" is your new Madness Mantra.

Mirror Boss: Toc-Man, the Big Bad of the game, who utilizes one of Pac-Man's techniques in each of its attack phases.

Recurring Riff: Nearly every tune in the game is a remix of the music from either Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man.

Shout-Out: The Galaxian flagship appears as a "fruit" unlocking the mazes in the first game. In addition, there is an entire boss level directly inspired by the game.

Though it's debatable as to whether the butt-bounce was inspired by Mario's Ground Pound, the rev-roll definitely bears a blatant resemblance to Sonic's spin dash.

Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Toc-Man collapses in a heap and Orson crawls from the wreckage and begins crying, Pac-Man isn't phased by the sob-story and pulls out a power pellet, chomping down on the ghost who kidnapped his family.

Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Orson, the pale green ghost that pilots Toc-Man; the one behind the kidnappings of Pac-Man's entire family and attempting to steal Pac-Man's own identity is only doing so because according to him, "No one loves a ghost".

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Tropes for the second game

Arc Words: Pac-Man is often told that everyone in Pac-Land is counting on him.

Big Bad: Spooky's the main antagonist of the game thanks to the ghosts releasing him after stealing the Golden Fruit.

Bonus Feature Failure: Your reward in the arcade for getting nearly all of the tokens (180 out of 189, which is extremelyNintendo Hard considering you have to nab all the collectible tokens in nearly every level and finish the rest with 100% Completion or do a time trial) is... being able to play Ms. Pac-Man. Keep in mind, you unlock the original arcade game at a measly ten tokens. It doesn't feel the least bit fitting for all your efforts for what amounts to a Mission-Pack Sequel for the original game, and it's not like it's a game you have to go out of your way to be able to play, considering it's littered across Namco Museum collections and several online console stores, and is usually a game of choice on the rare places that still have an arcade machine in operation. Unlocking it is practically a Bragging Rights Reward.

Bottomless Pits: The farther you go in the game, the more terrain becomes composed of nothing but thin lines and platforms surrounded by deadly elements such as pits, lava and freezing or grimy water. It's a huge part of how this game can be so difficult.

Camera Screw: The camera will often refuse to turn at certain moments, even when it obstructs the next platform you need to get on.

Chainsaw Good: Treewood Forest and to a lesser extent Butane Pain has circular saw blades as common obstacles.

Cut-and-Paste Environments: Notwithstanding the gas burners at Butane Pain and other gimmicks between the aforementioned levels, they share similar geometry, just at different locations.

Demoted to Extra: Helivators were a major platforming element that were littered all over the first game, showing up at least once a stage; in this game, they make a grand total of two appearances, across the same level in the same proximity no less!

The Dreaded: Pac Man. In the opening cutscene, Blinky flees from a shadow that he thought was Pac Man.

11th-Hour Superpower: Subverted. In the cutscene just before the final boss, Pac-Man returns the golden fruits to the tree, causing him to turn gold himself...but his color is the only thing that actually changes, and the boss fight plays exactly like if he wasn't gold.

Go for the Eye: A variation on the one above; to defeat the big submarine in "Whale on a Sub," Pac-Man has to shoot the four stern propellers - while avoiding the mines the sub "poops" in your general direction.

Green Hill Zone: The first world, a meadow region referred to inexplicably in the manual as the "Forest", while the game refers to it as Paradise Meadows.

Guide Dang It!: Some fruits/tokens are hidden in really obscure places you wouldn't think of looking, but Night Crawling in particular has an egregious example, one of the apples is hidden inside a bat hovering around hellevator platforms over a bottomless pit, most people wouldn't be crazy enough to try and kill that particular bat(trying to flip-kick them is a real pain in the ass)

Heroic Mime: Pac-Man again, except in some versions where he comments on the bosses' weaknesses.

In Case of Boss Fight, Break Glass: Inky and Clyde are defeated this way. Pinky also has a glass hitbox that shows cracks and deformation as she takes damage, but the player can't actually reach it.

Many checkpoint sections have more than one extra life for which the surplus can be abused, but the best one is the secret area in Butane Pain, which can give eight one-ups for the price of one!

Blade Mountain is incredibly generous on lives. Not so much the first time through, but normally when a token is collected on one visit, every revisit will replace it with a health wedge. Blade Mountain has a few crates that hang in mid air, but instead of being replaced with health wedges, they're replaced with LIVES. You're forced to open most of these crates too, so you can potentially gain thirteen lives on one visit. Very few are hidden for the most part.

Law of 100: For every 50 Pac-Dots you collect, you regain a health wedge.

The Last of These Is Not Like the Others: Played straight with the whale-shaped ocean boss, but inverted earlier on; Clyde, Inky, and Pinky all pilot giant robots shaped like ghosts. Blinky pilots a giant robotic frog.

Lock and Key Puzzle: Fruit chests are nowhere near as prevalent as fruit doors from the previous game, but they serve the same purpose.

Mad Marble Maze: Magma Opus has a section like this near the end of the level.

Nintendo Hard: 100% Completion requires very skilled platforming to collect everything compounded by the screwy camera, the precise jumps required, and one-way levels such as Blade Mountain. In addition, Time Trials have strict upper limits for the Bonus Token reward and of course, dying at any point is an instant failure. Of course, the requirement for unlocking Ms. Pac-Man is nearly every token, which means you have to complete most of the challenges to play it in the game.

If you had a release that was pre-Greatest Hits/Platinum Hits/Player's Choice, the game was even harder. The ghosts killed you in one hit, the platforming was more dangerous, and the power-ups didn't last as long. Games do go through revisions from time to time, but very few are this notably different from each other.

One-Hit Kill: Ghosts in the original release (Pre-Greatest Hits/Platinum Hits/Player's Choice). Later releases Nerfed them to only taking off a health point if you touched them, which greatly reduces the difficulty in some areas especially in the last world where they no longer pose much of a threat.

Pragmatic Villainy: Clyde, taking note of the other ghosts mistakes, made the metal for his Humongous Mecha out of sturdier stuff (i.e. metal that won't crumble with a few rev rolls), so the only place you can hit him is the cockpit, which is really hard to hit, mind you.

Recurring Boss: Three out of the main four ghosts use an identical-looking (aside from color) machine shaped like a giant ghost that spits out projectiles.

Recurring Riff: The intro to the Pac-Village theme often shows up as part of the rest of the music tracks.

Timed Mission: A sidequest for each non-boss level, available once you beat the level normally. All checkpoints disappear, but you don't lose extra lives for dying. Also fruit and extra life pickups are replaced with clock that freeze the timer for two and four seconds, respectively.

Video Game Cruelty Potential: In the Pac-Village, you can actually butt bounce on all of the inhabitants who happen to be standing in the open (Professor Pac, Handy Pac, and Sue in the arcade), and they will react to it too!

A Birthday, Not a Break: As with the first game, its story takes place on Pac-Man's birthday. This time, it's his 25th.

Advanced Ancient Acropolis: The Ancients, who built many of the ruins that a few levels take place in. They were destroyed when their lust for power drove them to try and siphon energy from the Spectral Realm. Erwin's big plan? Do it right this time.

Bash Brothers: Pac and Clyde towards the game's end, full-stop. While it starts as obvious Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, the two end up manning the same mecha to take down a literal army and generally spending the rest of the adventure tagging out with each other to dish out punishment.

Continuity Nod: When Orson's initial attempts to teleport Pac-Man in instead send him all over the town, Pac-Man grumbles that at least it was still better than his 20th birthday.

Darker and Edgier: Compared to the rest of the trilogy. The levels have a much more gritty feel in this game, and Erwin is the most evil Pac-Man villain to date, with the fate of both Pac-World and the Spectral Realm hanging in the balance.

Somewhat more subtly, the sound effects (or at least the ones that aren't traditionally in every Pac-Man game) are less cartoonish. Compare the "butt-bounce" sound in this game to the one from Pac-Man World 2.

Also, the game's art style is noticeably bleaker and more realistic than the colorful, cartoony style of the first two games.

Enemy Mine: Pac-Man has to work together with the ghosts he fights in every other game in order to stop Erwin's plan. Once the mission's complete and Pac is returned home, the brief alliance is finally over and Pac-Man decides to have the ghosts for dinner...literally.

Expy: Since the ghosts are working with Pac, the role of "enemy that is invincible until you eat a Power Pellet" is filled by even more ethereal creatures simply called Spectrals.

Good Old Fisticuffs: Pac finally puts those boxing gloves he's been wearing for twenty-five years to proper use.

Gotta Catch 'Em All: The trading cards. One can be found in each level, and you can get another by collecting all of one type of fruit in a level. Unlike World 2, however, Pac-Dots just add to your score and are not required.

HeelFace Turn: Orson has reformed since his last appearance in Pac-Man World, and now serves as Pac-Man's Mission Control. It is unknown what happens to Orson's alliance with Pac-Man following Erwin's defeat.

Hollywood Hacking: Orson manages to simplify hacking into Erwin's Energy Syphons by turning it into a classic-style Pac-Man maze.

Make Me Wanna Shout: Clyde can use a sonic scream to attack enemies in the segments where you control him.

Mini-Mecha: The new Toc-Man, described by Orson as being "15 tons of the most state-of-the-art bad guy-smushing technology ever balanced on legs". When Clyde's in the copilot seat, it gains a sonic scream cannon.

Thin Dimensional Barrier: A new Big Bad named Erwin is creating energy siphons to drain energy from the Spectral Realm. In theory, these siphons can be set up anywhere, but one particular area where he'd set up a siphon is later explained by Mission Control as making a kind of sense, as the barrier between dimensions was thin there. This doesn't seem to have any effect other than to make the siphon's operation easier for Erwin, though.

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